This would be the last time we played this incarnation of Wimbledon and by then they were very much Wimbledon in name only. They were already playing home games at the National Hockey Stadium in Milton Keynes and at the end of the season the Football League allowed Pete Winkleman to change the name of the side he’d taken over to the MK Dons.

The fans of the real club had already established AFC Wimbledon in the summer of 2002 and at the time of this game were top of the Combined Counties League which they would win starting a run of 5 promotions taking them back to the Football League in 2011.

For more about the whole sorry business of how two members of a three person independent panel, commissioned by the FA, allowed franchising to happen see the Wikipedia article, ‘Relocation of Wimbledon F.C. to Milton Keynes‘.

The side we played that day were really an embryonic MK Dons. In May the FA had given the go ahead for the then owners of Wimbledon to relocate the club to Milton Keynes, although they wouldn’t actually move for another year. In response the supporters of Wimbledon re-launched the club as AFC Wimbledon and by the time of this game were already playing in the Combined Counties League which explains the rather empty away end.